


In A Foreign Country

by AerinAlanna



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 06:58:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4128990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AerinAlanna/pseuds/AerinAlanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kalasin knows her duty to her country and her family.  Perhaps it will go better than she expects.</p><p>A series of one-shots, interconnected and probably not chronological.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sometimes she forgets what she wants

**Author's Note:**

> Tortall isn't mine. Kalasin and Kaddar are definitely not mine, or there would be a lot more about them in the books.
> 
> Rating will change if more mature content occurs.

Kalasin had known from an early age what was expected of her. She was to marry well, form alliances with Tortall’s neighbors, and support her father and then, later, her brother, as a foreign ally. She knew the importance of her role as princess, and she wanted to succeed in her family’s aims. She wanted to be whom and what the kingdom needed.

Sometimes that was forgotten, though. Like when she watched the Lioness, her father’s Champion and friend, fight and win against challengers. And later, when her brother Roald and the other pages and squires were practicing and she ached with yearning to join them and prove herself. And when she heard of Keladry of Mindelan, who had fought so hard to win her shield, and who went on to be a hero of Tortall, her heart cried for a chance to distinguish herself as more than just a Conté princess.

But by then she was married, the empress of Carthak, and she knew that she was where she needed—wanted—to be, and that there was no going back to change her life, to leave for Lianne and her other sisters the duties of royal women, to go after the life of someone whose worth is proven in combat, not by bloodlines. Sometimes it was too easy to forget what she wanted. Other times, too easy to remember.

She wanted peace in the eastern lands, and with Kaddar she was helping to create that. Not by her own sword, of course, but through treaties, and magic, and plain hard work.

Kalasin had always loved hard work. She was good at it, and the simple doing of it endeared the act to her, who saw what it accomplished in Tortall. Her father, Uncle Gary, the Lioness, her mother…every day she had seen what they did by hard work alone, and she admired it. For that same reason, she admired Kaddar, and what he hoped to achieve in Carthak. And when her old yearnings for a sword or a bow threatened to overwhelm her, she sometimes found them too easy to forget.


	2. It was a lie

“You will be happy here,” he told her.

She wanted to believe him—wanted to fall headfirst into the truth he held of that statement—but she knew in her heart that it was a lie. The jewels and entertainments that Kaddar brought, the earnest desire in his eyes for this to-be-wife of his to experience happiness and contentment in this land he loved so well…none of it reassured her that what she felt—a struggling to keep from falling over the edge of homesickness and fear—was totally unnecessary.

After all, what was she, really? A foreign princess, sent to be a foreign empress to a land that had just been pulled back from the brink of chaos? Aunt Daine said that Kaddar was a good man, but Aunt Daine had also seen some good in Ozorne because of how he cared for his birds. Surely that proved that taking judgment of people through animals’ views of them was not always right.

But Aunt Daine had met Kaddar herself, and had liked him. Surely that meant something. If Kaddar was as good and kind as reported, and as committed to improving his country as everyone said, then perhaps it wouldn’t be so terrible.

If only Carthak weren’t so gods-blessed far away from home! Why couldn’t Tortall have needed another ally in Galla, or Scanra? Why all the way across the sea?

Kaddar. His name wrote itself across her mind. He might be different from everyone she knew, might live in a country whose customs confused and even disgusted her at times…but he was alone. She knew how her father had been before her mother had swept into Corus in rags and dignity, and how he had changed because of her arrival. Raoul and Gary both loved telling the Conté children of their parents’ mishaps and unroyal behavior, to the open chagrin of the king and queen in question. If her father, who seemed so confident and collected now, could have been as arrogant and muleheaded as her uncles had portrayed him, perhaps a woman to talk to really was important. Someone to trust, and to support, and encourage. She could be that for Kaddar as he changed his country. A helpmeet, to ease the burden of kingship with wise suggestions and an ever-listening ear, to aid and support him.


End file.
